Please reevaluate the balance between crafted and U/U items.

[Lavani]

Even with a tank. When things get hairy, you can't rely on the tank to have every single mob going after him. I've seen PT's fall apart many a time when one too many mobs gets linked, or two mobs pop when you're already fighting 4-5. A DD who can't soak up a couple of big hits for 30 seconds is a liability.

In this case you will most likely wipe anyway, unless the healers are well geared. The reason, as soon as those new mobs pop, and link, your healer will take all the hate with the best enmity generation, Cure/Curaga. Also if your DD can't finish off the mobs because they are itemizing defenses your healers will just run low on mana and you'll wipe. So although defense is good for DD as well, you're not going to seek out items that specifically give you those mitigation stats. Armor is a pretty big mitigation and high level gear has a lot of it, regardless of the + stats it gives.

[Physic]

Getting an HQ is a complete crap shoot, it takes no skill at all and the only knowledge you need to have is "oh hey hand of the gods is up, I better hit enter before this timer runs out in 20 seconds." Any crafter who believes that there is some sort of deep facet to crafting is completely delusional. Sure, you need the correct abilities to maximize your quality but from there on out it is completely random. You can get 600+ quality on an item and still get an nq and you can get 100 quality on an item and get an HQ. And until they completely rework the HQ system so that HQs are actually worth something more than just adding a little bit of extra defense to an item then it doesn't matter anyways because defense is not a priority for any class other than a tank. What you should really be upset about is the fact that the HQ system is garbage, not the fact that the people who want the meat of the game to drop things that are actually useful so we have something to do. I will reiterate this for the 8 billionth time this thread that people still don't seem to be understanding. THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN U/U DROPPED GEAR AND CRAFTED GEAR IS MARGINAL AT BEST, IF YOU WERE ABLE TO ADD MATERIA TO THEM THERE WOULD BE NO WAY FOR YOU TO NOTICE THAT YOUR DAMAGE MITIGATION OR OUTPUT HAS INCREASED WITHOUT HAVING YOUR OVERALL DAMAGE RECORDED.

If you crafters don't want the game ruined for you then stop trying to overinflate the value of the items you produce. There is no reason anyone should have to pay 20 million gil for an HQ+3 item that doesn't perform well enough to warrant even a 10th of that price unless you are a tank. And don't flood the market with the NQs so they are near worthless either, because that is exactly what the crafters of this game do. They flood the market with NQs so that they are near worthless while trying to produce the HQs, then sell the HQs for such a high price a person can just pay half that price to level up the craft themselves and farm the materials in the time it would take for them to ever save up enough to get the HQ+3 in the first place.

Like I said before, it is a crafters job to supplement the game and help move the content along. Not have it in a headlock.

first of all, i am first and foremost a pugilist.

Second of all, HQ items are highly valuable. for a number of reasons.
Defense boosts on armor items
DAMAGE BOOST on weapons
Less chance of blowing up during melding
Rarity.

the reason someone should have to play 20 mil for an hq3 item, is because it is hard to make. You either have to gather a large number of hq3 items, which is even more random than non finished items, or have insanely good luck and skill.

Its not as simple as pressing a button, you have to obtain various skills that effect your quality, you need to have luck, and you need to adapt to the what the synthesis rolls.

It is not 100% chance even if you play your best and get the highest score, but in battle its the same thing, just because you defeat a monster doesnt mean it will drop its best items. It doesnt mean it requires no skill to beat a dungeon just because you dont always get the drop.

The truth is a +3 item takes a lot of preparation, a lot of luck, and playing the hand you are dealt as best as possible, and even with that it is still only a chance, this is why its worth so much. Because it is both difficult, time consuming and rare to get a +3 item.

the whole NQ market being so crappy is only partially due to crafters own desires, fact is NQ isnt worth as much when people can get Ifrits weapons, and aim for them, the other factor is either items are disposable materia makers, or they are a 1 sale per chr item. The other factor, is the current recipies require people to make finished products in order to level, and they need a mass of items in order to level.

And yeah, i leveled up crafts for self suffiecency but i will tell you, someone can make more money in the time it will take you to make one HQ3 than it costs by far.


So yeah, in your perfect world, what does a crafter offer to the world? how do they make any return (money or otherwise) for their time. What is it someone who crafts should hope to achieve? (a battle class hopes to fight and defeat the baddest of the baddest monsters with style and finesse) what is a crafters ultimate goal?

[Physic]

In this case you will most likely wipe anyway, unless the healers are well geared. The reason, as soon as those new mobs pop, and link, your healer will take all the hate with the best enmity generation, Cure/Curaga. Also if your DD can't finish off the mobs because they are itemizing defenses your healers will just run low on mana and you'll wipe. So although defense is good for DD as well, you're not going to seek out items that specifically give you those mitigation stats. Armor is a pretty big mitigation and high level gear has a lot of it, regardless of the + stats it gives.

depends on the actions on your other DD, a marauder who keeps warmonger for emergencies, or a pugilist with taunt, can actually save lives. Defense matters also when you grab hate from a spike or when a tank lose hate on side mobs, or new ones spawn. Then you got a class like pugilist who can actually do more damage when tanking than not in most cases.

[kro]

Uh, before materia, the Solid Scale Mail is clearly superior.

Before materia, cobalt haubergeon didn't exist. I don't know where you pulled that from. In fact, Iron Cuirass was still superior to Solid Scale Mail in terms of HP and physical def.

Since when is 6 > 7? The scale mail also has additional stats, or did you just ignore those to try to prove your (invalid) conclusion.

I specifically chose gear that favors DDs. Also, the benefits of +6 STR far outweigh +1 atk and +1 acc. If you want to try and argue that minimal points in HP, magic evasion, and parry are worthwhile for a DD to use it over the Haubergeon, then be my guest. But keep in mind that you are also sacrificing a materia slot for 70 HP or further boosting of your DD potential by slotting Savage Might.

Solid Scale mail doesn't even come close to Cobalt Cuirass (Red) in terms of a tanking perspective. A versatile player would have both the cuirass and the haubergeon because they're so cheap and inventory space isn't exactly lacking. So using solid scale mail as some all-in-one body armor would be like intentionally gimping yourself when more practical and more efficient options are available.

Anyways, it seems like the point was lost here. Crafted gear without materia is on par/better than unique gear from a raid. The only exceptions are Ifrit weapons. There needs to be better balance. I'm sad that I actually had to point that out.

[Molly_Millions]

Before materia, cobalt haubergeon didn't exist. I don't know where you pulled that from. In fact, Iron Cuirass was still superior to Solid Scale Mail in terms of HP and physical def.

he was saying before you add materia to the item, not before materia existed in-game.

I specifically chose gear that favors DDs. Also, the benefits of +6 STR far outweigh +1 atk and +1 acc. If you want to try and argue that minimal points in HP, magic evasion, and parry are worthwhile for a DD to use it over the Haubergeon, then be my guest. But keep in mind that you are also sacrificing a materia slot for 70 HP or further boosting of your DD potential by slotting Savage Might.

Solid Scale mail doesn't even come close to Cobalt Cuirass (Red) in terms of a tanking perspective. A versatile player would have both the cuirass and the haubergeon because they're so cheap and inventory space isn't exactly lacking. So using solid scale mail as some all-in-one body armor would be like intentionally gimping yourself when more practical and more efficient options are available.

Anyways, it seems like the point was lost here. Crafted gear without materia is on par/better than unique gear from a raid. The only exceptions are Ifrit weapons. There needs to be better balance. I'm sad that I actually had to point that out.

You can't tell me that +32 hp, +1 def, +1 Att, +1 Acc, +2 Magic Evasion, and +3 Parry are worth nothing, (or as you say, worth less than +6 Att) that's ludicrous. Plain and simple, before you add materia, the scale mail is better than the hauby.

[Cycloptichorn]

Before materia, cobalt haubergeon didn't exist. I don't know where you pulled that from. In fact, Iron Cuirass was still superior to Solid Scale Mail in terms of HP and physical def.

Obviously, I meant that before you add materia TO the solid scale mail, it's clearly superior to the cobalt hauby. No question.

I specifically chose gear that favors DDs. Also, the benefits of +6 STR far outweigh +1 atk and +1 acc. If you want to try and argue that minimal points in HP, magic evasion, and parry are worthwhile for a DD to use it over the Haubergeon, then be my guest.

Thanks, I've already done exactly that. +6 str isn't worth writing home about; it adds on what, a few points of DMG per attack? Big whoop. I'll take effects that boost my char in other needed ways every time.

Anyways, it seems like the point was lost here. Crafted gear without materia is on par/better than unique gear from a raid. The only exceptions are Ifrit weapons. There needs to be better balance. I'm sad that I actually had to point that out.

Well, your message was muddied by making an incorrect assertion. But, I do agree with your conclusion, that there needs to be better balance. This could easily be solved by implementing set bonuses to the U/U sets; that would keep the dungeon gear from being too OP over regular gear unless you've REALLY done the dungeon a lot of times, and create interesting tension when it comes to the choice of whether or not to swap out a single piece. It's also relatively easy to implement.

[Req]

first of all, i am first and foremost a pugilist.

Second of all, HQ items are highly valuable. for a number of reasons.
Defense boosts on armor items
DAMAGE BOOST on weapons
Less chance of blowing up during melding
Rarity.

the reason someone should have to play 20 mil for an hq3 item, is because it is hard to make. You either have to gather a large number of hq3 items, which is even more random than non finished items, or have insanely good luck and skill.

Its not as simple as pressing a button, you have to obtain various skills that effect your quality, you need to have luck, and you need to adapt to the what the synthesis rolls.

It is not 100% chance even if you play your best and get the highest score, but in battle its the same thing, just because you defeat a monster doesnt mean it will drop its best items. It doesnt mean it requires no skill to beat a dungeon just because you dont always get the drop.

The truth is a +3 item takes a lot of preparation, a lot of luck, and playing the hand you are dealt as best as possible, and even with that it is still only a chance, this is why its worth so much. Because it is both difficult, time consuming and rare to get a +3 item.

the whole NQ market being so crappy is only partially due to crafters own desires, fact is NQ isnt worth as much when people can get Ifrits weapons, and aim for them, the other factor is either items are disposable materia makers, or they are a 1 sale per chr item. The other factor, is the current recipies require people to make finished products in order to level, and they need a mass of items in order to level.

And yeah, i leveled up crafts for self suffiecency but i will tell you, someone can make more money in the time it will take you to make one HQ3 than it costs by far.


So yeah, in your perfect world, what does a crafter offer to the world? how do they make any return (money or otherwise) for their time. What is it someone who crafts should hope to achieve? (a battle class hopes to fight and defeat the baddest of the baddest monsters with style and finesse) what is a crafters ultimate goal?

I suppose we can just agree to disagree on what a crafters standpoint in the game is and how skilled you need to be to HQ items as I am not going to budge on my standpoint. In the first week I played the game one of my linkshell members with nothing but mining and goldsmithing leveled Hq +2d and Hq +3d an ornate silver scepter in about 2 and a half minutes worth of time and ended up making about 25 million a week later from this. Sure it took him a bit of time to gather those materials, but I can guarantee you I couldn't have farmed anything in this game, then or now where I could have made 25 million gil in the time frame it took for him to level and gather those mats.

The only true solution to this problem that I could see that would benefit both sides at this point would simply be for there to be no Unique/Untredeable gear at all and all raids drop materials which can be used to make items. This will solve the problem of materia not being able to be added to unique untradeable gear but this opens up another can of worms however, where every single item in the game is sellable because of this fact and no one would really have the need to experience the content for themselves because they can simply buy the items but that is a whole other argument.

Furthermore, this still doesn't solve the dillemma we currently have where all of the NMs are worthless, most of the chests in strongholds are worthless, and Ifrit is more than likely going to be worthless in a months time. The only way for this to truely work is for them to completely overhall the darkhold drops, the nm drops, and the current ifrit drops because sooner or later this content wont be worth doing because of the fact you can't add materia to them. They will also need to make the moogle fight drop only materials as well which can be crafted into the weapons.

[Orophin]

I'm confused why they only made the sentinel pieces sans the legs socketable and not any other chest treasures...

[Cycloptichorn]

In this case you will most likely wipe anyway, unless the healers are well geared. The reason, as soon as those new mobs pop, and link, your healer will take all the hate with the best enmity generation, Cure/Curaga. Also if your DD can't finish off the mobs because they are itemizing defenses your healers will just run low on mana and you'll wipe. So although defense is good for DD as well, you're not going to seek out items that specifically give you those mitigation stats. Armor is a pretty big mitigation and high level gear has a lot of it, regardless of the + stats it gives.

What it really depends on is communication. Most groups who get in this situation have a main tank AND a couple of MRD's floating around these days; if the MRD's know the enemies are attacking, they can pop Warmonger and drop a big aoe on the new mobs pretty quick.

Knowing when or when not to run is a big deal too. Can't tell ya how many times I've seen squishies panic and start basically running around in circles while they are getting hit, and I'm frantically trying to pull the mobs off of them, but they are just a little too far away...

[Molly_Millions]

I'm confused why they only made the sentinel pieces sans the legs socketable and not any other chest treasures...

That's easy, it's because the other pieces are untradable. The real question is why are some of them untradable while rest are not.